Advertising To Doctors

Advertising to doctors, defined broadly, consists of a wide range of medical industry marketing activities designed to influence physicians’ prescribing behaviors. These activities include but are not limited to display and insert advertising in medical journals; detailing (i.e., direct, typically face-to-face, albeit brief, interactions between sales representatives and physicians); giveaways, such as clipboards, coffee mugs, notepads, pens, reflex hammers, refrigerator magnets, and other promotional items imprinted with drug brand names or corporate logos or both (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA] categorizes such items as “promotional labeling” to distinguish them from advertising per se); free drug samples; product brochures and pamphlets displayed in patient examination rooms, lobbies, and physicians’ offices (which the FDA also categorizes as promotional labeling); literature distributed via direct mail; electronic ...